How do you get through to your customers and potential customers in this era when pleasure is not only expected but still leaves them jaded?
It's hard to be novel and the star of the show these days, for any more than Andy Warhol's famed "15 minutes" because all of us are saturated with pleasure triggers. Professor Anna Lembke pulls the curtains back from this phenomena in her book, Dopamine Nation. It makes for some sobering reading.
Why did we have that drink, take that pill, ogle over titillating stories at the bottom of that online news story, spend hours trawling Netflix for something to bingewatch, or even pick up our phones to find ourselves reading this?
We are seeking pleasure in the form of distraction.
If you can stay with us, you will be rewarded by some intriguing insights for yourself and your business.
It should only take as long as it takes for the head to settle on a freshly poured pint of Guinness. Oh, that's the subject of our Perspicacity segment!
But we start by punting a footy around a country paddock, as Steve shares his unexpected and surprisingly effective method for switching off during down time.
Talking About Marketing podcast episode notes with timecodes
01:41 Person This segment focusses on you, the person, because we believe business is personal.
Country Sport Shortcut
On a recent holiday, Steve stumbled onto a "hack" that helped him get into relaxation mode, fast.
Like most founders, he's pretty ordinary when it comes to switching off, but an overheard conversation in a bottle shop changed that.
On Friday evening in Middleton, Steve popped into the local hotel to get some whisky and wine (a nice segue into the next segment about being addicted to pleasure), when he overheard a couple of local lads talking about tomorrow's footy game against Mount Compass.
The next day, Steve and his family grabbled lunch in Mount Compass and then paid their $7 a head adult entry fee to access the local sports ground where his wife watched the local netball with one daughter, while he watched the local football with the other one.
Just 20 minutes into this process, having already having the first of many strangers come and sit next to him and start light conversation, Steve realised he'd cracked the code for finding the "off" switch for work and the "on" switch for social connection and relaxation: an afternoon immersed in country sport.
It might not have been as relaxing for the locals but because Steve had no skin in the game regarding team loyalties, he was able to just enjoy the atmosphere of humans engaged in good-spirited competition.
If you try this on your next stay in a regional area, let him know what you discover.
06:40 Principles This segment focusses principles you can apply in your business today.
Dopamine Nation
Anna Lembke’s book, Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence, helps us understand why instant gratification has become the norm.
According to Lembke’s argument, we live in a world of easy pleasure (fast food, instant entertainment, gaming, and pornography, just to mention a few) in which the addictive potential and pursuit of pleasure is ubiquitous.
Consequently, instant gratification characterises our age, and has some dark consequences: the more pleasure we experience, the more pleasure we want; the more pleasure we have experienced, the more pleasure it takes to get the same buzz; and the more pleasure we have experienced, the more any moment of suffering begins to feel like extreme pain, which can only be countered by even more pleasure.
Under these conditions, it is becoming progressively more difficult for people to concentrate on boring/neutral activities for any length of time, and people are becoming even less willing to do uncomfortable things.
Unsurprisingly, people who have learned delayed gratification, who can manage their pursuit of instant pleasure, have a real advantage in most aspects of life.
The only significant downside of delayed gratification is that people can learn to work so hard, for so long, that they can forget how to experience pleasure (that's a reverse segue back to the opening section about finding peace int local sport).
We all know at least one workaholic who no longer remembers how to have a relaxing day with their family and friends, or how to do something just for the sake of immediate pleasure. Our pleasure-pain balance can be messed up by both too much pleasure and too much suffering through hard work.
Delayed gratification is especially useful and only sometimes problematic, while instant gratification has become detrimental to our wellbeing.
Therefore, we need to reflect on how much pleasure we seek, how much pain minor suffering causes us, and how hard we should work toward our long-term goals.
In the conversation between David and Steve, they discuss what this means to us with our marketing hats on.
19:32 Problems This segment answers questions we've received from clients or listeners.
Achieve SEO Gains By Attending To The Small Details
I have long had some fun entries on my much-neglected personal site, stevedavis.com.au, including some fictional About Me pages.
They have been designed to "cash in" on and experiment with the Google value of my namesakes like famous cricket umpire, Steve Davis, famous jazzman, English footballer, and, of course, the snooker player.
Two weeks ago, I gave those pages a quick nip and a tuck, in which I double checked wording on the pages, ALT text on the images, and meta description information.
Despite having been published like that for more than 10 years, that "SEO spring clean" resulted in me getting around a dozen email enquiries for Steve Davis the snooker champion, having never had one ever before.
So, when inspiration isn't quite there, go through and spruce up the pages you have; you might be pleasantly surprised (as many businesses were early in Covid when they did just this and saw great results)
23:31 Perspicacity This segment is designed to sharpen our thinking by reflecting on a case study from the past.
Waiting For Guinness
We reflect on an old ad for Guinness, this episode, because it amplifies the high degree of delayed gratification one needs while waiting for the head to settle on this black brew.
Could such an obscure ad as the Guinness Horses ad work today? Listen to the chat.
TRANSCRIPT This is a transcript of the episode. Please note, although checked briefly, this was crafted by an AI tool and will contain errors. For quoting purposes, always check against the original audio.
Caitlin Davis: [00:00:00] Talking about marketing is a podcast for business owners and leaders, produced by my dad, Steve Davis, and his colleague at Talked About Marketing, David Olney, in which they explore marketing through the lens of their own four P's, person, principles, problems, and perspicacity. Yes, you heard that correctly.
Apart from their love of words, they really love helping people, so they hope this podcast will become a trusted companion on your journey in business.
Steve Davis: David?
David Olney: Yes?
Steve Davis: I can give you one Guinness now, but... If you wait until the Perspicacity segment, I'll give you two. What's your choice?
David Olney: I'll wait. I'll wait. I, I have the ability to delay [00:01:00] gratification.
Steve Davis: Have you always had that ability?
David Olney: Yeah, it's one of the few advantages of being blind, that if you don't know where something is, the choice is to either pull the entire kitchen apart to find it, or wait until someone gets home and ask them.
Alright, well I'm going to put this Guinness can back down on the cupboard, and I will join you. See you soon.
Caitlin Davis: Our four P's. Number one, person. The aim of life is self development. To realise one's nature perfectly. That is what each of us is here for. Oscar Wilde.
Steve Davis: In the person segment this week, I've got a reflection from off the beaten track. Because my family and I went away on a recent weekend, and we had four or five days. We went to a little town called Middleton down on the south coast. Wonderful little patch of turf, beautiful ocean [00:02:00] beach there, and it was glorious.
But I know that I'm notorious when it comes to unwinding on holiday time, and I think this is not far fetched from all the founder stuff you've been talking about, David. It just, when you're running a thing, you obsess and think about it all the time, and I just know enough to know that I'm not good at unwinding.
Probably not uncommon, I imagine.
David Olney: No, you are very much the normal person who wants to do right by other people, wants to do right by yourself, wants to do a good enough job that there's a chance to do a good job again tomorrow, which means every day the idea creeps in your head of what bit of work should I do now so that there's Opportunities to keep doing good work tomorrow.
Becomes a bit of a dangerous cycle, doesn't it?
Steve Davis: Well it does, and that's why I'm pretty tough about this accidental discovery, because my wife's from the country, and it was Friday night, I went to get a bottle [00:03:00] of whiskey from the local bottle shop in Middleton, and a couple of the boys were there talking about footy tomorrow.
I went, oh, where are you playing? And they said, oh, Mount Compass. So I said to my family, why don't we go? and have a day at Country Sport, and we did. Headed off, got in there, and we had lunch in the pub at Mount Compass. Then we walked across to the, the big oval, because we knew the football and netball would be at the same location.
Walked in, paid our 7 a head each for the adults, kids were free. And we spent the whole afternoon, the girls were watching the netball, I found some great seats in the grandstand. the four tier grandstand, and just watched a football where I didn't really care who won or lost. It was just a wonderful display of athletes going at it against each other, and people would come and sit down, and we'd have a bit of a chat, and before I knew it...
It had been hours, the [00:04:00] phone had stayed in my pocket the whole time, I hadn't been thinking about work, I was just lost in this wonderful environment of busyness, people were all connected, there was chatter, there was camaraderie, it was a magic. Tonic. What's going on there, David? Why is this my magic thing?
David Olney: Well, I don't think it's just your magic thing. It can be a lot of people's magic thing. You tapped into a community activity. There was a competition. It was exciting to see who could win. It was exciting to see how people performed. It's an environment where in a country town in particular you do get all the social commentary of everyone chatting and as you said to me, people just said hello to you because you're sitting in the stand.
So you were also included. It was like, oh, he's a stranger. Don't talk to him. It was the exact opposite. So what a wonderful, engrossing way to spend an afternoon. New people who are willing to engage with you, [00:05:00] who are showing how socially connected they are. A competitive activity, with people striving to do a good job and have fun.
What a wonderful way to get a whole kind of different endorphins.
Steve Davis: It really was. And one little thing I remember is one bloke who chatted, he had a veteran, I think it was a vet badge, on for the club, a foundation member or something like that. I said, how long have you been involved? He said, oh, I think it was about at least 50 years.
We were chatting and one of my daughters wanted to go home a little earlier and he overheard the conversation. I didn't realise he'd overheard it, but anyway, we ended up staying towards the end and as I was walking past, he said, ah, so you won that debate then. And I said, yeah, I did. It was great. Just to be remembered as a human by a stranger I'll probably never meet again.
It was just, I just wish we could bottle this sort of experience in daily life.
David Olney: It's so important to remember that we don't need to know people to still [00:06:00] have a good day. And that we don't need to know the teams in the game. We just need to appreciate the fact that people are putting effort into playing sport and bringing community together.
And if they're at all open to include us. There's so much potential to remember. We need days off, and we just need to have good clean fun.
Steve Davis: And, as they say, a change is as good as a holiday.
Caitlin Davis: Our four Ps. Number two, Principles. You can never be overdressed or over educated. Oscar Wilde.
Steve Davis: In the book Dopamine Nation, Dr. Anna Lembke talks about how the pleasure part of the brain, the bit that registers our sense of pleasure, is the same area that also senses pain, and how we, as we go seeking pleasure through whatever means, It could be, [00:07:00] well, the rubbing together of genitals. So do we mention this is not necessarily a family friendly episode?
I can't remember.
David Olney: Well, it's particularly family friendly if that happens and it creates new family.
Steve Davis: Yes, that's true. Having an extra slice of pie. In fact, she uses an example. You've had a piece of chocolate and you're thinking of having a second one. Tame example, what she should be saying is you finished half the family block of chocolate.
And now you're thinking of devouring the second half. And what you find is diminishing returns. We get less and less bang for our buck. You are a great champion of the findings in this book, David, let's put it on the table from the perspective of us marketing our businesses.
Anna Lembke's Book: Dopamine Nation: The first and most important rule is that the balance wants to remain level. Or what neuroscientists call homeostasis. So that with any deviation from neutrality, our brains will work very hard to restore a level balance. How do they do that? [00:08:00] First by tilting an equal and opposite amount to whatever the initial stimulus is.
That's called neuroadaptation. I like to think of that as these neuroadaptation gremlins hopping on the pain side of the balance to bring us level again. But those gremlins like it on the balance. So, they don't get off as soon as we're level, they stay on until we're tilted an equal and opposite amount to the side of pain.
That's that moment of wanting a second piece of chocolate or wanting to watch one more TikTok video. Now, if we wait long enough, those gremlins hop off and homeostasis is restored. But what if we don't wait? What if we continue to ingest our drug of choice over days to weeks to months to years? Those gremlins start to multiply, and pretty soon we have enough gremlins on the pain side of the balance to fill this whole room.
And then we are entering addicted brain, and this is what addicted brain looks like. Those gremlins are now camped out on the pain side of our balance, tents and barbecues in tow. Now we need our drug of choice not to feel pleasure, but just to the level, just to level the balance [00:09:00] and stop feeling pain.
To illustrate this graphically, what we see is that with the initial exposure to a high dopamine reward, we get a huge increase in dopamine, followed by precipitous fall in dopamine levels, not just to baseline, but actually below baseline to that dopamine deficit state. That's that moment of craving.
That can happen even while we're eating the piece of chocolate, right? We're already thinking about the next one. But if we resist... Those gremlins hop off and dopamine levels go back up to our baseline level position. But if we continue to ingest, what we find is that with repeated exposure to the same or similar reinforcing stimulus, that initial spike upwards gets shorter and weaker, but that after response gets stronger and longer, and eventually we can end up in a chronic...
Dopamine deficit state. That is addiction. And then finally, we can seek out pain. Because those gremlins are agnostic to whatever the initial stimulus was. So if we intentionally [00:10:00] press on the pain side of the balance, they will hop on the pleasure side of the balance, and they won't get off the level position.
They'll stay on until we're tilted an equal and opposite amount to the side of pain. That's the science of hormesis. Hormesis is Greek for to set in motion. What are we setting in motion? Our bodies own up regulating mechanisms to increase our feel good neurotransmitters norepinephrine, yay, things like exercise, ice cold water baths, fasting, prayer, meditation, this is a healthy way to get our dopamine indirectly by paying for it up front.
You can see here graphically what happens when we initiate the painful activity, let's say exercise. We slowly increased dopamine over the latter half. And then once we stop exercising, dopamine levels actually remain elevated for hours afterwards before going back down to the level position. So we never have to go into that dopamine deficit state.
David Olney: Okay. I think the first thing to start with here is a bit more of an extension of what you were just describing. And that is that the bit of our brain that deals with pleasure and pain, we really need to understand [00:11:00] as a balance. So the more times we pick our phone up, the more time we binge Netflix, the more times we have another bit of chocolate, the more times we have another bit of pizza, the more we get all these little ding ding dings on the pleasure side.
But the more of them we get, the less impact they have. And our brain tries to balance this. By moving the balance of the pain pleasure system towards the negative, towards the pain side. Now the consequence of that is, if something bad then happens to you, just a small thing, like you get to the bus stop, it's really important that you get to the city on time, and the bus is late.
And instead of just thinking, oh, this is a bit annoying, It suddenly becomes the end of the world because your pleasure pain balance is out of whack. And I think from a marketing perspective, the aspect of this we need to focus on is as much as we want to help people to fulfill their dreams and to solve their problems.
We need to be careful that we're not just [00:12:00] constantly feeding in to this need for the next teeny tiny endorphin hit because it's endless and each endorphin hit has less and less impact on our customers. So we're possible if we can get our customers to slow down and go, well, if you want this thing, it might take a little bit of time and it might take a little bit of effort, but if you get the right thing.
And you were really looking forward to it. The anticipation means you will probably get more out of it. So, novelty is important. Instant gratification is normal. But we need to remember that slowing down and seeing the big picture and seeing the cost in dollars and the cost in time helps people to appreciate things more.
Steve Davis: All right. So yes, this, this is a, it's an interesting, interesting book. It makes interesting findings. I don't find the writing particularly good.
David Olney: No, it's very much a psychiatrist writing a book as a psychiatrist. Yes. It's very bland and dull and formal and technical. And yeah, you need to read it at about one and a half [00:13:00] speed to not zone out.
Steve Davis: Yeah, maybe next time I'll read it lying down on the couch, that might help. So, we've got this scenario that has two levels to it. There is us, people leading or running a business. Where is given to this as anybody. We're all humans and we are surrounded by dense, Calorie food that satisfies us drinks, all sorts of drugs, et cetera.
And so that chasing the diminishing returns, but I think it's when we think, wow, this is also our customers out there, this could explain some behavior, some inpatients, some. easy sense of being bored. If you've perhaps from a tourism perspective, you're running hayrides on your country farm and you've got to slow down and get off and open the gate etc.
It's much more likely these days that the people in the back, especially kids or teenagers have been dragged along to be there, will get [00:14:00] impatient faster and either whip their phones out and zone out because of this reduced tolerance for. Anything that's not on the pleasure side of the spectrum. So what do we do about that?
I think partly being forearmed with the knowledge of to why it's happening is interesting. But also as I think you might be able to explain a bit more David, she does talk towards the end of her book about some of the surprising findings. And one of them is, If you actually immerse yourself into pain deliberately, that's why going to the gym is an example she uses, it's counterintuitive, but it actually starts giving you some dopamine rewards, which keep rising when you finished at the gym and stay elevated.
And then they don't go back and swing out of balance. They just take us nicely back to neutral. So with our customers, I wonder if we could structure some storytelling to help, depending on the business we're in, to help them appreciate [00:15:00] the importance of waiting or the importance of having to hike a certain number of K's before you get to see from the plateau over the ranges, because the payoff will be better if we can cope and set our mind correctly to deal with the pain.
David Olney: I think we can approach this from a few ways for our customers. So, for example, imagine you're a cooking school. If you just put the meal in front of people, they just eat it. They don't really think too much. But if you teach them to work with sharp knives safely, if you teach them to work with the hot wok, you know, on the gas burner.
So there's tons of heat and the, the wok is literally glowing red and you have to get them to do it safely and carefully. Even in an environment like that, the effort involved in doing it safely and well is going to make that food taste better. The effort in an adventure holiday of, you know, you've shown them the photo on the website, this is where we're going.
But it's going to take two hours paddling to [00:16:00] get there. In so many cases, an idea of the reward is good, but also not hiding the fact that you're going to have to work, and that you should work safely, because things can go wrong. That little bit of anticipation of, I need to be careful or I could hurt myself.
You know, we don't want people at risk, but the same token, they need to behave like there is a chance if I do something dumb, there'll be consequences. The benefits are that you enjoy the end point far more. So when, you know, when we can possibly do it in marketing, help lay out the full story of how do we get to the endorphin hit at the end.
What are the steps along the way? Is there effort involved? And in some cases, people are so far gone down the dopamine pleasure path that they go, oh, what do you mean there's work? No, I don't want work. I'll just eat chocolate. It's almost better that you don't have to deal with those people if what you're offering is a six hour canoe trip to get to a beautiful wreck.
Because they're just gonna really struggle and they're gonna be the person that makes it really [00:17:00] miserable for everyone else.
Steve Davis: So maybe this equips us to be aware that if we're going after trying to shovel as many people into our tour, for example, it's possible without being discerning about it, we're just increasing the likelihood of some really negative TripAdvisor reviews.
David Olney: Precisely so, something, let's use your hayride example. Yes. Imagine we're going to pile everyone on the cart full of hay. Quickly show them, these are some of the birds we have on the farm. You know, these are really rare. These are only here for this month. The minute anyone sees anything I've just shown you the pictures of, call out quietly and point so the rest of us can see them too.
Turn it into an effort that has the fun immediate reward, but has the thing of, well, I don't know if we'll see one. I don't know how long it will take, but build in The game and the anticipation of effort to get the reward.
Steve Davis: And I think just being aware of this too just means we can modify the story, the way [00:18:00] we set up the offer to bring people into our world.
I've got a friend who's building a house at the moment at Port Adelaide and the times are delaying out like you would not believe. And I just think there is a paucity when it comes to the builder. Using story to keep things within a tolerable zone instead, because one of the things that also comes out of Anna Lebke's work is that the flip, so you endure pain, you have a fantastic payoff, but if you are promised something and it's not delivered.
It's negative in a big way. Big way. Yes. We shouldn't be over promising. If we now have academic scientific proof as to why we should not over promise.
David Olney: Yep, because people will be even more disappointed and in a world of endless reviews, over promising is just really now the kiss of death.
Steve Davis: So, is this a roundabout [00:19:00] way of coming to that classic thing of under promise and over deliver as having some value?
It's not the be all and end all, but it actually makes sense in this current state of society.
Caitlin Davis: Our four Ps, number three, problems. I asked a question for the best reason possible, simple curiosity.
Steve Davis: Let's turn to problems now, and this one I've entitled, Attend to the Small Details. And it's because a couple of weeks ago, I think it was two and a half weeks ago now, on my personal site, stevedavis. com. au, which is really my much neglected hobby site, I actually have some fictional About Me pages.
Because of my name Steve Davis, also being used by a famous cricket umpire world famous snooker player, there's a [00:20:00] jazz man, there's an English footballer, et cetera. I, many years ago, about 10 or 12 years ago, I created these fictitious about me Pages on my website. So sub pages in which I've got picture of me with a, a tuxedo next to my pool table, and this is the about Steve Davis world championship snooker player.
I've got the Steve Davis in cricket umpiring set up in a picture and I'm Steve Davis. Cricket umpire, and I did it as a bit of a fun google experiment in the early days. It got me some extra traffic. It was hilarious. Did, you know, diddly squat since then because it's much neglected. Anyway, two, two and a half weeks ago I just went through on a whim and I thought I'm going to check these.
I just freshened up some of the writing. I made sure that the picture of me as world champion snooker player had that text in a little box called the alt. Text, which means that for screen readers, that text is read out, but also it means [00:21:00] Google pays extra attention to those words. I made sure that the meta description that Google might show in its search results was filled out properly and it took me all of 40 seconds for each of those pages.
Would you believe David in those two and a half weeks? I've received a dozen emails from people emailing me as Steve Davis the world stooker Champion asking legitimate questions I have for the sake of attending to the small details of website SEO had this huge payoff. What do you think about that?
David Olney: It shows how much power that there is in doing search engine optimization properly, but it also shows.
That people do not always do a lot of discernment before they click because the photo of our Steve Davis is going to look different to the photo of any of those [00:22:00] otherwise famous Steve Davises. And yet did people do one of these does not look like the other one. No, they didn't.
Steve Davis: It does surprise me because I double checked it.
I actually emailed one of the people back saying, has someone put this email address somewhere on the planet? And he said, no, I just Googled. Steve Davis World Championship snooker player and came to this site, so I used the contact thing.
David Olney: Which suggests that Steve Davis World Championship snooker player hasn't updated his website for a long time either.
Steve Davis: Yeah, and so that's the other thing with SEO, search engineisation. It becomes irrelevant very quick. Yes, but it is also a relevant thing. It's not who you don't have objectively the best. You're just better than the people you're competing against. It's all relative. So anyway, I just thought I'd use this as a fun way to remind all of us that there's always value in going through and giving things a nip and a tuck and a spruce up because it does jangle the The, you know, after the bell in the shop door, when [00:23:00] someone walks in and jingles, it does that and Google goes, Hang on a minute, there's some activity over here.
We'll go and have a fresh look and re index you anew.
Caitlin Davis: Our four Ps, number four, Perspicacity. The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it. Oscar Wilde.
Steve Davis: Finally, Perspicacity, and we've picked an interesting one this week. It's long, it's black, it has a golden foaming head. It's that Guinness I promised you, David. And I waited. You did wait. You'll see that there's two I'm holding up for you right now.
David Olney: It's a beautiful world where there's two Guinnesses instead of one.
Steve Davis: Unfortunately, they're where I am and not where you are, but what I'll do is I'll drink them mindfully and I'll [00:24:00] write a small essay so you can experience them vicariously.
David Olney: That's good. I'll go and eat the chocolate in the pantry and... and tell you about it later.
Steve Davis: All right, we're talking about Guinness because this is where we look at maybe an older campaign and we ask ourselves, would it work today?
This is an interesting one. It's black and white. It's from 1998 and you've basically got surfers, a man waiting for a Guinness to be poured. You've got surfers in the ocean and these animated horses arise out of the water. As this long build up happens, while you're waiting for those bubbles to settle in the Guinness.
Let's have a listen.
...
I really need a Guinness now after hearing that. What do we think? This has actually come in a beautiful topic to have as a pigeon pair with the dopamine nation, David, because I think it's making the point. 98, this ad, Celebrated the fact that when someone [00:25:00] pours a Guinness, you actually do have to wait.
Otherwise, it tastes like a, I don't know, it tastes like a...
David Olney: It tastes like beer sludge as opposed to yummy stout.
Steve Davis: Yeah. So what's going on here? Is this actually, was it ahead of its time in some ways? Is this a style of advertising message? That brands might need to start thinking about to cut through our perpetual seeking of pleasure instantly.
David Olney: It's interesting that it's about the time that the first tech bubble burst. That initial phase where we thought the internet was going to grow really fast and become really profitable really fast and it just didn't happen and so much speculation went out the window. And it was probably a very interesting contrast to go something so old that people appreciate a good stout.
Actually, nothing's changed. You still need to let it settle, and yeah, it seems to me an ad that we should revisit [00:26:00] the underlying concept, because it's a good one to go, hang on, have a bit of anticipation for this thing, and give it a little bit of time, because you'll slow yourself down, and you'll put yourself in a better state to enjoy whatever it is, particularly the Guinness, and keep enjoying it.
Because you chose to focus on this one thing, sitting in the pub, what are you going to drink, the people you might be with, and instead of being distracted by everything, you're centered. And besides that, it's always cool if you've got animated horses.
Steve Davis: Well, there is that. I actually think this has got legs, so to speak, to be revisited, because there are still things today that have this, Value of time and workmanship that cuts through.
It's a bit like it is understood that used to sparingly actually sending prospective customers a good old fashioned letter in the post [00:27:00] is many times more impactful than anything else from a. junk mail pamphlet to a digital ad, et cetera, because it's unexpected. If done well, it gets that fresh bit of cut through.
And we've had the slow food movement. There are slow clothes. A lot of, I've been working with people selling yarn. So people knitting their own socks and things like that. There is still value there. If I, and I think the trick is, can we imagine a stylus on a record and it's stuck and it's going and that's us chasing that quick fix, quick fix, you know, restaurants that have designed these days to move us through at pace.
What can we do in our messaging to just nudge that needle out of that into a fresh groove where we actually have, we honor. And value that it's worth taking that little bit of extra time to really enjoy something. I think [00:28:00] it's a challenge, but I think there are people who maybe don't even know it yet, but who would resonate warmly with this.
And yet, here am I, theatre reviewer, I am much more inclined to prefer plays that run an hour these days. I've been trained that way and I have less appetite for those huge two and a half hour things, in fact, offered in my reviews. I say, you know what, we could have taken a red pen to act two dropped it all together because it just didn't further things.
So I'm as much to blame as anything else. But then again, just going long and slow for the sake of it is not what we're talking about. I think there's nuance here. It's got to be worthwhile.
David Olney: And your play example is a perfect one because there are famous old plays that we would happily sit through the long version and there are movies where we'll happily sit through the three or four hours, but it's got to be that we are constantly [00:29:00] engaged and it's moving and it's achieving something and presenting something that the value proposition is maintained and perhaps even enhanced.
So really your value proposition. Can only be extended outward if there is actually something there that adds value to people if they spend more time.
Steve Davis: Well, I think it's time for us to, to pack up this one and I might just go out, get a nice fresh glass and crack this can. Ah, the sediment. My sediments, exactly.
Caitlin Davis: Thank you for listening to Talking About Marketing. If you enjoyed it, please leave a rating or a review in your favorite podcast app. And if you found it helpful, please share it with others. Steve and David always welcome your comments and questions, so send them to podcast at talkedaboutmarketing. com.
And finally, the last word to Oscar Wilde. There's only one thing worse than being talked about, and that's not being talked about.[00:30:00]